The Verums
'''The Verums '''were a large secret cult, that believed in and learned about the Judex and the power of Alius. Both the Judex and the power of Alius are important aspects of the Verums and are what's guiding the Verums and judging them. The Verums believed that humans were the only race with the rights to exist and therefore opposed any other races, including Halfhumans and Northmen. Aware of their lack of popularity, the Verums isolated themselves and prepared to take over Cortus with force, incinerating all who'd not take part in the campaign, even fellow humans. The Verums had, although unknown to everyone else, huge effect on the political decisions for many millenias and were also the number one reason for slavery still existing, as they wanted to oppress Northmen and Halfhumans as much as legally possible, until their operation began. While the Verums believed other races should cease to exist, they offered an incredibly painful cleansing, in which a race could actually be converted to a human and peacefully move on. The operation was so painfull though, that barely anyone accepted, which almost with certainty resulted in death for the decliner. Building a civilization Being formed into adult humans right away by the gods, humans immediatly found themselves alone in a large and inhabited unknown world. Fearing the dangers ahead, humans founded a military group named "the verums", that firstly prioritized protecting the population, primarily by avoding warfare. But despite promising to preserve their focuses, the verums grew arrogant and started uncarefully exploring the regions around the humans' first city; Conditus. With the verums slowly being interested in military tacticts, humans naturally grew to research animal husbandry as their first major study. Continuying to search the regions, the verums eventually discovered the existence of mortuus ruins. Upon sight of noticing the superior architecture, they immediatly rebuild the entire city, naming their second city; Mirabilis. The city proved it self to be much better localized, than Conditus, resulting in impressive innovation, when it came to building. It also aided in innovating the military equipment, ending up with their first invented long range weapon; the bow. It is questioned if the mortuus' still existed during the time of the humans' growth, but ruins indicate that the verums at some point reached one of the last mortuus compounds and destroyed the entire base. But eventually, the civilians of both Mirabilis and Conditus heard of the verums deeds and intentions. The people demanded a democracy, instead of a military rule and ended up banishing the verums from influence, as they prioritized an entirely new social policy. With the verums gone, humans started researching non-military studies, like writing, fishing and mining. Theories that support the existence of humans and mortuus' in the same timeage, largely believe that the verums survived, by conquering Mortuus' territories. In the meantime, the democracy of humans began to build in the areas south from Spatium. Desiring only knowledge and prosperity, the humans proved unconflicting in their desires and everything was diplomatically agreed on. It didn't take long, before the humans, depending on the used theory, either breeded or met the halfhumans and northmen and created a multicultural republic, constantly expanding their area of influence. This was officially announced with the birth of a third city; Cultus. This made the verums feel betrayed. Having spies from within, the verums noticed the harsh nature of the halfhumans and the inferior biology of the northmen. Continuying to desire a pure world, with zero dangers and zero segregation, the verums made it their new goal to completely annihilate these new races Supporting the Judex - A quote from the Judex. The Verums was first established a few years after the creation of humans. As humans were confident that other races would grow wise enough to oppose them, they made a declaration of conquest, stating that all who agreed shall forever and with their descentdans always aim for destroying or opposing any other threat, with the exception of organisms used for either work or health for humans. The Verums were therefore as civilized as possible, while still having their beliefs and dedic ation to the Judex. The judex was a combined book of declarations, quotes, stories and ethics used to define and explain the way of the Verum, meaning it was a sort of bible for the Verums. While the Judex didn't mention things such as how to use the Alius, other books and forms of literatue was still used to compensate for the Judex's lacking details, which also forced the Verums to study for a large portion of their young adult life. This also required the Verums to create schools, in which the students would learn about the foundation of the cult, the outside world, politics, the judex, the Alius and understanding of the ethics and morales within the cult. The school proved incredibly useful and the Verums grew in both numbers and wisdom in the years before the pact war. The Judex was also the fundament for the religion that the verums believed in. They were convinced that the creator of Cortus, called the earthmaker or Sator, established the humans on Cortus and then accidently included other humanoid races, such as Halfhumans and Northmen. Because of that, The Verums believed they were cleansers of the world, meant to rebuild Cortus the way Sator wanted it from the beginning. The power of Alius The power of Alius was a secretly located power source, that contained an alternative type of magic, that didn't require bloodcells to function. Instead, Alius was more like an electrified form of energy, being most efficient with common use of spells, mostly destruction spells. However, The alius required a specific amount of blood cells, meaning only humans were capability of using it, which the Verums considered a sign from Sator. The Verums therefore used this as an argument for only humans deserving to live and continue on Cortus, with the addition of the tales and texts from the Judex. The Alius also granted a longer list of spells, that were impossible to use with normal magic, due to the impossibility of imagining the specific images in ones head. However, this made the Alius relatively limited, as only a smaller amount of useable spells had been discovered, meaning the powers might have been more destructive, but the variety very little. Because of this, The Verums also practiced using magical particles, in order to ensure they had the largest arsenal of magical spells and powers, making them very advanced magicians and wizards. As the amount of blood cells decided if the individual could use the Alius, the transformation from another race to human also required that the actual bloodstream was altered, which caused major pain. That exact process was also a spell discovered in the Judex.